Toward the Goddess

On July 27 1981 I turned 31 years old. At that time I was in the Pentecostal Christian stage of my religious life and certainly had never entertained the idea that the Goddess, goddesses, or Isis  would play any role in my life. I was determined to know the Biblical God Yahweh, to be a Christian and to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I was partly successful in seeking these goals. I  received the baptism, the gift of speaking in tongues, and Jesus for a while. However the fact is that even after I started praying in tongues I was never absolutely certain that God  existed. Neither was I ever able to give up my idea that an everlasting hell and salvation by faith alone made little sense. Within a couple of years I met a women who is still my closest friend who introduced me to a literature that gradually but radically revolutionized my vision of God.

She introduced me to “Ariadne” a novel by June Brindell. This historical novel  introduced me for the first time to  the ideas of matriarchy, the Goddess, and to the idea that in ancient times when the Goddess was worshiped women and men lived in  equality. Later I was introduced to the ideas of  Robert Graves that the  male gods represented  patriarchy, the  repression of nature and the body and war. During the  1980’s I also read such feminist spiritual classics as “When God was a Woman”  by Merlyn Stone, the “Spiral Dance” by Starhawk and the Mists of Avalon by Marian Zimmer Bradley. I even experimented with Wicca for a short time period attempting to blend it with my previous beliefs about God. That did not work  well. I have never been able to completely reject  my allegiance to Yahweh the God who I perceived in spite of all his jealousies and patriarchal tendencies to be a liberating God of justice. The biblical vision of the Kingdom of God and Justice as taught by the Latin American liberation theologians still retained my loyalty. It was liberation theology of the Catholic priests and Marxists of Latin American and the mystical revolutionary theologies of   prophets such as Thomas Muntzer the theologian of the German Peasants’ Revolution of the 1520s who  defined my Christianity.  My Pentecostal theology had collapsed in the first half of the 1980’s.

What did change , however, is that  I began to believe that it was wrong to see God as male only. Not only that, it was   wrong to pray to God as if God were male only. Thus if God is be addressed by the male “metaphors” of Father, King, and Lord then God should also be addressed as Mother, Lady, Queen, and even as Goddess. However I hardly believed in a Goddess or goddesses at this time. What I believed in was  the inclusive gender neutral deity of modern Liberal Protestant Feminism. My god was an androgynous deity. I began to privately pray to God properly addressing God with a balance of  male and female metaphors.
 
However within a very few years I had become a lover of the Goddess who  I was able to love more than I had ever been able to love either God the Father or Jesus. How did this happen? Well by my prayers and by looking at pictures. I  was introduced to the idea promoted by a Christian writer named  Morton Kelsey that it made sense to meditate on images and pictures. I explored a lot of new ideas in those days. One day I visited  the local Greek Orthodox Church during its  annual Greek festival and picked up one of the bulletins on which portrayed  a beautiful some what westernized icon of Mary and the infant Jesus. I of course had already been introduced to the idea that Mary was the Christian version of the Goddess. That was one of the reasons for my attraction to the icon. Within a few months I placed the icon on a home alter which I had recently constructed.

I would pray before it using my by then standard, balanced, and androgynous our Lady and Lord,  Mother and Father formula. But what happened is that I gradually fell in love with the Goddess that the icon represented. I did not want any longer to pray  to an androgynous God or to a purely sexless God.  I wanted to pray to the Goddess who appeared  within the icon. And you know  I began to feel a greater degree of adoration for the  Holy Mother, for the Goddess, for the Lady than I ever had to the distant God the Father and the ambiguous Jesus. 
 
Glenn King

what is in a name?

One of the ideas of modern liberal theologies is that the names of God are really not that important. Names, in fact, are commonly used to exclude people socially and theologically. Thus references to Christianity, God, Jesus can be used to exclude those people such as Hindus, Jews, and Moslems to whom these religious labels, persons and symbols mean little. In other words the names of God can be used to say “We worship the true one God and you worship false gods.” 

However, names do matter. The name of Yahweh,  God the Father, and  Allah while they do have much in common also have much in the form of  differing theologies, devotional traditions, and historical communities that differentiate them. For those such as myself who am interested in what is often called in Christianity the “Divine Feminine” or in Modern Paganism the “Goddess” names also matter. The ancient goddesses Cybele, Inanna, Athena, and Isis for example are all were connected to very different theological conceptions and traditions. They were radically different goddesses if one wishes to see them as different divine beings. Or from a more  monotheistic way of thinking they all represent differing visions, aspects and ways of the Goddess. Their names can not be used interchangeably. The use of the generic divine title the Goddess itself is indicative of this reality.

I was first introduced to the Goddess by writers such as Merlyn Stone a radical feminist writer and Starhawk a priestess  of Wicca in the early 1980s. At that time in my life the Goddess represented to me nature, wiccan worship, and an ancient matriarchal egalitarian civilization that supposedly existed prior to the origins of patriarchy. I assume that perhaps most pagans still believe in this Goddess. However this Goddess  certainly does not resemble the classical goddesses such as Isis, Hear, or Demeter. Neither does she resemble the Hindu goddesses Durga, Parvati, or Laksmi. The traditions that they represent are quite different. This is not to say that similarities do not exist between these goddesses. However the differences are as important as are the similarities. Thus Isis  is the goddess who makes the power of women to be equal to men. She is mistress of the elements. Yet in many way she  differs from the Goddess of the old radical Feminist Spirituality movement.

I have just changed the name of this blog to reflect my own devotion to the Goddess Isis. Her Name is important because it reflect a particular theological vision and tradition of goddess which in many ways differs from other goddess traditions.  This  Isis as envisioned during the Greco Roman period is  the creatress of all reality. She  is central to my religious being.

Another aspect of Isis that she is the Name behind the names of the other  goddesses. Thus she can be Isis Demeter or Isis Hathor or …?
I will resume my discussion of  Mary in another post.

Glenn

another name change

I have decided to change the name of this blog  to “Aset [Isis] Maryam [Mary].”  I have been very busy and have not posted  here for several months and  I am confident that few people have been reading the posts here during this time period. Therefore, I do not want  to spend much time expressing why I am making this change. My future posts will show both why the name has been changed and will demonstrate the direction I have decided to go with this blog.

Glenn

Changing Names

I have recently changed the name of this blog. Its original name Thinking on Mary: independent views no longer reflect what I am able to do. Do not get me wrong I am still a believer in a high Marian form of Christianity, though most would call this heresy. However the fact is that the subject of Mary has been completely marginalized in the modern world. The Protestant majority of this nation have no use for her. The “progressive” Roman Catholic feminists view her as a symbol of patriarchal oppression to be replaced by an upgraded vision of the Holy Spirit. To the Neopagan community she is just a weak vanilla form of the Goddess. The traditionalist forces within the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches in fact  make up almost the whole of the communities that adore her. My problem of course is that my own independent views of Mary radically diverge from that of both traditional Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Thus not much room for discussion exists with hard core members of these communities.

 

Thus while thinking on Mary  will continue to be a dominating aspect of the blog, I am  increasing the scope of the discussion. Many other subjects will be discussed. Among these will be both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy of course.  But also to be discussed will be Neopaganism,  classical paganism, the emerging church movement, the kingdom of god, the Bible and in fact the whole range of religious and theological subjects in which I am interested. I have retitled my blog From the Margins because that is how I view my own ideas and thought as being from the margins, the borderland of acceptable thought. Most of my ideas are from an in between land of heterodoxy that does not fit into the dominating orthodoxies of today whether those  be Christian, Pagan or any other. 

 

Why Mary?

I going to post this from both Sarah Morrigan’s Oregon Collyridian blog and the Mother God blog. I think that it is excellent.

Glenn

 

Why Mary? January 5, 2009

Filed under: By Sarah Morrigan, Collyridian the@logy — thelittleprincessofiris @ 11:22 pm
Tags: Mariology, Virgin Mary, Collyridianism, Philomarianites

Sometimes I get a question from people, like this:

• Why do Collyridians worship Mary, she is just a human.
• Why don’t you just worship Goddess?
• What is wrong with inclusive-language scriptures and liturgies?

My short answer to all of the above:

When we worship the Holy, our faith and devotion must be stronger than mere manipulation of words or intellectual assent to any doctrine. After all, it does little good if all what one is doing is reciting a creed or a prayer that she does not think is “right.” As the epistle of James states, one cannot have a wavering mind when one prays.

While it is certainly valid and correct to pray to a “gender-neutral” deity of an inclusive liturgy, or simply to a non-specific Goddess, there is an element that cannot be neglected: one’s subconscious — the part of us that is beyond the rational mind, but that which belongs to the heart.

For many of us, the iconology of the Virgin Mary has a very powerful imprint on our consciousness. It is no wonder that there are more apparitions of Mary than that of Jesus, Moses, or any saint, and how such apparitions draw thousands and millions of followers with a deep, heart-felt faith. At the very least, for those with an average exposure to the Western culture, the very image and name of Mary evoke something beyond and above the intellectual reasoning, pseudo-religious experimentations, or anything that is on the level that could ever be considered “artificial.”

The authors of Mother-God.com website explain this point more fully:

In Christianity, however, the patriarchal doctrine was carefully sealed. There was no room doctrinally for the Creatrix and officially, the importance of the Blessed Virgin Mary was simply that she was the physical vehicle of Christ’s incarnation.

However, both Her titles and Her iconography told a different story. Despite the official theology, the image of the Supreme Mother was returning to the West.

She was called Mother of God – an extraordinary title which logically implies that She is antecedent to, and the Cause of, any other Divinity.

The ancient titles of the Supreme Creatrix were bestowed on Her – Queen of Heaven; Star of the Sea; Rose of the World. She was pictured “clothed in the Sun” like the Solar Mother, with the moon at her feet. She was depicted crushing the head of the serpent just like Eurynome, the Mother-Creatrix of ancient European religion.

Even theologically, the Divinity of the Blessed Virgin Mary was hard to suppress. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception means that She was conceived without sin. Now, according to Christian doctrine, all humans are conceived in original sin, and only Christ can redeem that sin. But the Blessed Virgin Mary, before the incarnation of Christ, was sinless, unlike any human being, and made the redemption possible.

Within the strict patriarchal economy of Christianity, the Blessed Virgin Mary cannot be recognised as God; but in Her iconography, her titles and Her devotional cultus (none of which have a great deal to do with the biblical and historical Mary), She is clearly God the Mother.

Western devotees of Our Mother God look upon the statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary with love and devotion: easily and naturally recognising Her as Our Lady. The question that then arises is: “Can we, and should we, take these beautiful images back? Or, since they are made within a patriarchal tradition that denies Her Divinity, would that be wrong?”

When we adore and devote ourselves to Mary, we are not merely speaking of a certain Jewish woman who lived at the turn of the first century, but of the Lady of All Things that is revealed through the icons and mythos of the Virgin Mary.

Likewise, as Collyridians we continue in the sacramental traditions of the Church through which many of the ancient worship of the Lady was preserved even as it was thoroughly theologized and reconstructed away in the centuries of patriarchal Christianity. This is also the reason why we find values in preserving many traditional practices of the Church, including the seven sacraments and the apostolic succession; we believe that they, like the icons of Mary, are symbolic and mystical vehicles through which the tradion is carried to this age.

+S.

Who are the Collyridians?

I have recently discovered the blog site of the Collyridian Episcopate of Saint Bridget of Portland, Oregon. For those who do not know, the Collyridians were a Christian group which were defined as heretical by the orthodox Christian writer Epiphanius in the 4th Century CE. To cite the blog site:

 

Who are the Collyridians?
By Markus Mössner

Kollyridians or Collyridians were adorers of Mary in the 4th century Arabia, as Epiphanius mentioned in his writing against heretics (see: Haer. 78, 23; 79). He coined the expression Collyridians which has the meaning of “cake-eater-sect”. Leontius of Byzance had a different name for them. He called them “Philomarianites”, meaning Mary-lovers (PG 87, 1364). The priestesses of this sect used to present Our Lady with cakes or a special kind of bread (kolluris) intended as offerings as was the custom in pre-Christian times. This sect, mainly consisting of women or at least led by woman priests, propagated what amounts to a Goddess cult regarding Our Lady. Epiphanius had this warning on their behalf: “Although Mary is the most beautiful and holy and worthy of praise, we don’t owe her adoration” (Haer. 79, 7, PG 42, 752). In a different passage Epiphanius uses even stronger words: “Adoration must cease. For Mary is no goddess nor has she received her body from heaven. (oute gar theos hae Maria oute ap’ouranou exousa to soma)” (Haer. 78, 24). Collyridians are also known and mentioned by John Damascene (PG 94, 728).

 

I would highly recommend that people check out this site. The leader  of the Oregon Collyridian community, obviously inspired by the ancient Collyridian movement, is Bishop Sarah Morrigan.  Bishop Morrigan ordained by  an Archbishop of the Reformed Catholic Church of America (Old Catholic) seems  to be  an articulate presenter of a maximalist Marian point of view. So far I have found her blog well worth reading. 

An Adjustment in Direction

At the end of my last log entree  I stated that “from this point on  I will look not primarily to the modern pagan theologies of Wicca, Pagan Reconstructionism, New Age thought, etc. I will not because Marian devotionalism is primarily a Christian phenomena and not a Pagan one.  But instead I will look  to the traditional, orthodox and heterodox religious traditions of Western Civilization for sources with which to dialogue.” On thinking on the project of this site for over two weeks now, I think that I have changed my mind on this. Certainly I will attempt in this place to share my thoughts and feelings regarding the orthodox formulations to Marian theology and devotion. However since in fact my own unique perspectives regarding Mary,  to a significant degree, have been strongly influenced by  sources such as Christian feminist theology and by Pagan conceptions of the divine, I now see no reason not to dialogue with these sources as well. After all the Greco Roman vision of Isis as the Universal Goddess has had a major impact on my own religious practices and theology. If readers of this blog, knowing of the impact of Isis on my life for example, attempt therefore to discredit everything that I say then so be it.

 

Glenn

Situating Mary!

I think that I will initiate this discussion by  situating the place that Mary has in the religious or spiritual life of modern society. From there I will be able to more adequately explain my own particular assumptions about Mary and better describe the direction of the future discussion of this site.

Mary the Mother of Jesus, the Theotokos, the Mother of God lives of course near the center of both the  Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Within both of these church communities, Mary is known as the Queen of Heaven who intercedes in prayer to the Trinity for her people, etc.  In both Catholicism and Orthodoxy Mary is prayed to, adored, and passionately loved. Further more  much of the art and cathedrals of Western Christian civilization have been  dedicated to her. Mary is as the Eastern Orthodox liturgy says “higher than the cherubim and seraphim. And yet in spite of this the apologists of both communities continually reiterate the message that Mary is only human and not divine. She, as many Protestants say,  needed to be saved by her Son as do the rest of us.

To say the least many members of the Protestant Christian community and members of  the very small but growing  Neopagan communities through out the world view these views as both contradictory and strange. In fact  from the Protestant point of view the historical Marian devotionism of the Catholic community seems to suggest  that the status that Mary plays in Roman Catholicism  is in fact that of a  Pagan goddess. In fact anti-Catholic Protestant preachers regularly make this  charge as a major part of their anti-Catholic rhetoric.

Modern pagans make the same charge al be it from a completely different perspective. Paganism in fact takes a certainly amount of glee in the fact that the most powerful Christian church seems to give worship to Mary. This fact, as they see it, confirms their idea that in fact goddess worship is a universal human inevitability. Even the anti Pagan Roman Catholic Church can not get away from it. However, a part from this perception it would seem that modern Paganism in general has little real interest in Mary. They do give her a slot as one of the many aspects or faces of the Great Goddess along with Diana, Isis, the Morrigon, Hecate, etc.  After doing this most modern pagans with obviously some exceptions  pretty much forget about her.

Now I can better place  my own views relationship to Mary. First I certainly am a supporter and practitioner of Marian devotionism. As a Marian maximalist I have a very high view of the status of Mary in deed. I hold such a high view of Mary that I in fact agree with both Protestants and Pagans who argue that Mary is a sort of goddess. In spite of the denials of Roman Catholic apologists the kind of devotion and adoration that Mary has received in Roman Catholicism is the same type of devotion and love that earlier pagan peoples gave to goddesses  such as Isis, Athena, etc. In fact perhaps the attention that Mary has received may  be even more than that received by most of the pagan goddesses. However Mary’s role is not that of a pagan goddess, as  both Protestants and Pagans imagine, but of a Christian Goddess. To be more specific I see Mary as in fact incarnating the Holy Spirit and the female Spirit of God called in the Bible – Sophia / Wisdom. To my own mind to see Mary as having any lessor status actually eliminates any reason for giving her the great devotion or worship that she receives. In line with my Protestant religious heritage, I have a  problem with the idea of giving adoration or praying to beings who are less than God.

So these are the views with which I start. This is the starting point of discussion. From this point on  I will look not primarily to the modern pagan theologies of Wicca, Pagan Reconstructionism, New Age thought, etc. I will not because Marian devotionalism is primarily a Christian phenomena and not a Pagan one.  But instead I will look  to the traditional, orthodox and heterodox religious traditions of Western Civilization for sources with which to dialogue. Since I am  passionately attached to most aspects of  the biblical word view and interested in the development of Christian theological traditions though out the last 2000 years  this will work well.

Glenn

 

 

 

Hello world!

Hello! Lets start. This is my first blog so all of this is new. The idea for this blog developed as a result of my experience in moderating a Yahoo group called Mary Queen of Heaven. The purpose of that group is to be a discussion group for all people who adore Mary regardless of their personal theologies regarding her. Thus persons holding traditional Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox views and persons holding Gnostic, Sophian or other unorthodox views of Mary have been welcome to that group. Within this blog I will attempt to continue the purpose of that group by making it a place in which independent and heterodox views of Mary, Jesus, early Church history, and all aspects of the Christian tradition will be discussed. My own beliefs? I think theology in a sort of borderland between traditional Christianity and other religious traditions, historical Paganism being one of them. However that said, my future posts here will not be representative of what is called Christo Paganism which in general is a type of modern neo-paganism with only a veneer of Jesus added to it. On the contrary within this blog I will in fact attempt to develop a serious dialogue with historical, traditional and heterodox forms of Christianity in their relationship with Mary the Mother of God. Enough said for now.